The tree is on the corner of Harmony Boulevard and Ravinia Road — they give the streets silly names in the graveyard.

I read a few more of the names into the recorder I brought with me that ride day in July, but I couldn’t find the good recorder that morning. What tape I have is minutes of crackling and wind. I make out odd words like “pine cones,” “birds,” “Symphony Shores” and “I ask why, but HUSBAND Harry Davies (1880-1949) won’t answer.”

A few months back I knocked on the door of a storefront on Cottage Grove, but not any storefront. THAT storefront. The one with the handpainted signs offering blues CDs, afrocentric books, King Tut and a once in a lifetime chance to meet the man himself, the one the only, the legend — Johnny Twist.

If all went according to plan, the wife and I are currently backpacking through Marseilles following the Tour de France and you’ve already taken bike routes through the history of newspapers and the LGBTQ community.

“I’m going to take my wife to breakfast,” he said to me suddenly on the highway.

It was the first thing he had said through the cab partition in about five minutes. He hadn’t blinked or batted an eye when I asked him to take me 12 miles to the stately stone towers of the University of Chicago’s Hyde Park campus, a place more movie set than neighborhood.

Instead, he told me he lived seven blocks from there. He said he could drop by his home and kiss his wife, his initial plan before he came up with the breakfast idea.